You are probably right, but your view is almost beside the point. What I expect is that because the intervals between games are going to be, on the average, very long and there is no huge benefit for doing well (e.g., qualifying for the WC), teams and, perhaps more important, club coaches are going to treat the games as friendlies. Coaches will not want to suffer the likely increase in injuries and general interruption of the club season which will be significantly worse if the games are played in a manner that equals those in WCQ. Even a USvMEX game will be played as friendly without full first team players because nothing is riding on it. I suppose the up side might be that new player options might get more opportunity.
Let's do a thought experiment. Below I'm listing the team pairings from the first round of CONCACAF qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. These are basically the teams that would represent the bottom tier of the League of Nations (with some exceptions: Curacao and Nicaragua have greatly improved their rankings since the qualification draw and this field doesn't include CONCACAF's non-FIFA members). Bahamas vs Bermuda BVI vs Dominica Barbados vs USVI St Kitts and Nevis vs Turks and Caicos Nicaragua vs Anguilla Belize vs Cayman Islands Curacao vs Montserrat Of all of those teams, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Curacao and Nicaragua were the only teams to draw more than 3000 fans. Of those four teams only Curacao filled more than half of their stadium and Nicaragua's 4000 fan draw is very disappointing. Three of the first round teams (USVI, Turks and Caicos and Montserrat) drew less than 500 fans to their home fixture. Keep in mind these were the most important games these countries had played in years! Now let's say that these countries all charged $10 per person for tickets. I suspect a lot of these federations gave away tickets, but for the sake of argument, let's say they were $10. (not to mention this is a ridiculous presumption considering that Nicaragua's nominal GDP per capita is less than $10 per day). That would mean that the majority of these teams made somewhere between a $5,000 and $25,000 gate. In my mind $20,000 is the absolute minimum a CONCACAF team would need to spend on an away fixture, even if you are only traveling around the Caribbean basin. You're talking upwards of $10,000 in plane tickets, $1-3000 for 2 nights of hotels, because these federations are cheap, we'll say $20 per diem per player over 7 days (18 players x 7 days x $20 = $2520). You'd likely have to pay for transit visas through the US, since that is the cheapest way to fly amongst some of these countries. Most of these countries hire coaches on a contingent per-tournament basis, so several thousand more for the coach. $1000+ per player if they want to fly in guys from Europe. So, of the teams in this bottom tier, the Bahamas, Bermuda and Nicaragua are the only ones who appear likely to break even on all of their matches and Curacao is the only one with a realistic chance of turning a big profit.
Some further points on my though experiment, in the US a USL or NASL team typically ends up folding if they don't average more than a few thousands fans per game. Also, the only transnational sports "league" in the Caribbean is cricket's Caribbean Premier League. The teams play 10 games per season (similar to the number of games the League of Nations would likely have) and operate on $1 million per year budgets. Of course much of that is salary costs which the St Kitts and Nevis Football Federation presumably won't be paying its players, but still, absent major sponsorship money, the level of fan interest doesn't support this type of endeavor for national soccer teams in the Caribbean.
Correct...unless the intent is to finance it with games against the US and Mexico. Which is why we can't just assume that CONCACAF will use the same format UEFA is using. I could be OK with this as long as it takes up no more than a third of our friendly dates, either by limiting the number of games or by letting us send a B team to LoN games while scheduling friendlies out of the region on the same dates for our A team.
Is there evidence for this? It seems to be a common opinion, but I have my doubts. Because as pointed out, a tiered setup wouldn't be as directly beneficial to the Caribbean minnows - and I can't see any alternative. Logistically, a tiered system is the only way this could possibly work. You've got 41 member nations - you can't play a round robin in 6-8 matches a year. You could possibly run a straight elimination tournament - but that would mean that all the eliminated teams would have to find friendly opponents on short notice for their next match. That and the fact they chose to call it a "league" rather than a cup suggests they're expecting to have regular league-style matches. Which is why I'm expecting a tiered system similar to UEFA's. Consequently, I don't think this is being primarily driven by the minnows - though they would get some benefit from this. I suspect the real driving force here are teams like Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Canada - the "second tier" teams, not the minnows (the guppies?) - the teams that have money and/or football prowess, but would find it hard to schedule regular, profitable friendlies. And I also suspect that the US and Mexico are more or less on board with it. As attractive as American dollars are, I don't think it's as easy for us to find profitable, available friendly opponents as some people seem to think. I also think some people are underestimating the boost in value that making a match an official competition would give.
FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) teams can decide their start times before the season. Most FCS games are not on TV. Florida State, who I'm a fan of, has their start times determined by TV one week at a time. Even if most of Rutgers' games are not on ESPN, their start times are impacted by the possibility of being on ESPN. Michigan probably has more games on ESPN channels and ABC than on Big Ten Network, while Rutgers probably has the reverse. The Big Ten Network can't make its schedule until they know what Big Ten games were selected by channels more people get and what games are left.
But, isn't he right about the national tv money all getting put in one big pot and then split evenly amongst all the Big Ten teams? Thus, the least valuable brands (Northwestern) and the least talented teams (Illinois, Rutgers, etc) get the same tv money as the best teams and most valuable brands (Ohio State, Michigan). I thought this was more or less how all the major conferences worked except for the Big 12 with their University of Texas sweetheart deal.
That's primarily what I'm wondering. If Univision for example buy the rights really just the for the Mexico and to a lesser extent our games, do the FA's of Suriname and Mexico get the exact same cut of that check?
Any reporting on this yet from journalists with good sourcing at USSF or FMF? It's a little weird that Reuters UK got this scoop and no one has gotten the skinny from the power players.
You clearly have no idea how USSF finances work. Go read an article on it -- this stuff is not a secret. Friendlies vs. top world teams will always pull in much more money than any matches against any CONCACAF nations except Mexico. Many more people want to buy tickets to USA vs. England (at a higher price) than want to buy tickets to USA vs. Honduras. You can disagree with those people if you want, but it's been proven to be true over and over again.
This LoN could be a year or 2 year long league... and the Gold Cup will still be a month long tournament. UEFA is using their UEFA League of Nations as qualification into EURO's. Maybe CONCACAF does the same and this new LoN is used as a way to qualify into the Gold Cup.
I think it's less beneficial financially to the small countries if they don't get a Big Dog mix. However, I think in sporting terms (if affordable) a regular schedule of several games that count against even similarly small fry nations (much less with upper tier teams) would be good for their development. I think some of you are thinking like Americans and our schedule. These countries, if they lose in WC quali and don't make Gold Cup, play maybe a home and away quali in the second half of the cycle, plus regional qualifying for a few weeks first half of the cycle, and then a smattering of 3/4 speed friendlies around that. They then have to try to catch up the US and Mexico with players in global leagues, who qualify for the tournaments and hog that experience, and who play a full schedule of games every year without blinking a financial eye. "Oh, I can play 10+ games that count a cycle instead of 5? Where do I sign up." Also, while American soccer finances are lucrative, our financial monopolization of the Gold Cup can't be forever, particularly in a post-Blazer/Warner era.
We don't know the format. Will it be important because if you do well you qualify for Copa America? How do you make the US, Mexico, and Costa Rica excited to play each other outside of qualifiers, much less small Caribbean nations on terrible fields. How do you incentivize this competition and make it matter to a federation like US and Mexico?
Here is how UEFA handle it. More info on what UEFA is doing is here. They are doing this in a 2 year cycle to coincide with Euros. 4 teams, I think 1 from each league will qualify into Euros. (edit: I got this wrong... 4 teams from each league enter a playoff with the other 12 teams for a chance to make EUROs) Maybe CONCACAF does something similar for Gold Cup qualifying?
The US probably hosting the World Cup in 2026 adds an interesting rinkle to this. Outside of Continental Tournaments and The Confed Cup (which is rumored to be going away), teams typically just play nothing but friendlies in the run up. These games would predominately be our only competitive games of the cycle and windows where these games don't happen could cause some scheduling issues.
concacrap matches suck (outside of mex and costa rica...and occasionally whover the next best 1 or 2 other teams are atm).....the us needs less matches against these scrubs not more. if they really wanted to make it interesting let all of caribbean be one team for soccer...and same for central america...then sht would get real. too much politics involved in all these recent developments. 48 team wolrd cup is horrbile. this idea is horrible. 3 team wc is horrible. how the hell can the us be on board with this?? is FIFA sayng you must do league of nations to get 2026?? seems fifa would love this lon bs. i think at least part of the reason uefa is doing this league thing to prevent the other regions from catching up to them, tbh. they notice the us beating euros in euope. they see how much money china is spending. they saw how the non euro teams did in brazil 2014. if you limit how many matches other regions have vs euro teams...makes it pretty hard for asia, concacaf and africa to catch up.
I think you are maybe right that they think this way but the real reason is because so many Euro club teams are signing and playing players from a round the world and they are getting better because of it.
The new Euro format is a little confusing (read Footsatt's link if you really want to understand it). It appears that UEFA decided they don't have enough time to run a full "League" so in stead they opted for a bunch of mini-groups and a mini playoff system. Another interesting note, this new UEFA LoN guarantees a spot to one of UEFA's bottom 16 ranked teams. That group of teams spans Cyprus to Gibraltar in FIFA's most recent rankings.
I dont think the UEFA LoN does award a bottom 16 team... initially I thought it did. here are the rules... The four remaining UEFA EURO 2020 places will be allocated to the winners of play-off matches which will take place in March 2020: • 16 sides will take part in the play-offs and are grouped four by four. Each group vies for one qualification spot. • Each of the four Nations League leagues receives four play-off qualification positions to be allocated to each of the four group winners within that league. • If any winners are already qualified through the European Qualifiers, then their play-off position will be allocated to the next best-ranked team of the league in question, taking into account the global ranking within the league, and then if necessary to the following league in decreasing order taking into consideration the global ranking of the relevant league. • The four teams in each league will play two one-off semi-finals and one one-off 'final' to determine each of the four play-off winners. Based on the rules above it looks like there will be 1 team fro each "league" in each of the four groups. So the 4 top teams from League A could win all the playoff spots.
It seems that all BS is good for is a bunch of fanboys overreacting. This will happen and every single one of them will watch and/or buy tickets.
Nope. Just an unhinged lunatic raving about something he knows nothing about. The idea came from UEFA so the closest thing we have to evidence is the format they're using in Europe. It's 4 tiers. The top tier is 4 groups of 3 teams. Home-and-Away round robin. Top team in each group advances to semifinal knockout stage. The bottom team in each group is relegated. The USMNT would never play a team outside the top 12 or so countries (as long as they avoid relegation).